Solaria
Solaria is the culmination of the history of terrestrial civilization. The Solar Civilization. The completion of mankind’s evolution from a terrestrial organism to an inhabitant of the cosmos. The Solar Civilization By the time of the Solarian Age, perhaps a few hundred years into the future, human civilization will have spread across most every portion of the solar system, out as far as the Oort Cloud. Thousands of colonies, on the planets, moons and asteroids but particularly among the asteroids and in solar orbit, may exist across the solar system, housing a population far larger than the Earth itself. Orbital habitats may predominate, as they are simply easier to create once a sufficient mastery of asteroid resources has been achieved. A full mastery of solar energy potential is also anticipated, with the deployment of vast solar collector rafts; photovoltaic arrays formed into solar sails that, instead of orbiting the sun, simply float on the pressure of its light and particles like rafts on the ocean, allowing them to position themselves near the sun’s poles to gather the energy that is lost to the Ecliptic and beam it by laser/maser to distant points in the solar system. This would be the beginning of the creation of one of the civilization’s greatest constructions; a Dyson Sphere that may one day obscure much of the sun’s area, save a strip along the Ecliptic providing normal solar insolation to the planets, and capturing a very large portion of its potential energy to drive our Solar Civilization. Marshal Savage characterized the Solarian Age with a vision of the solar system adorned in a golden halo of countless orbiting EcoSphere habitats forming a vast web of life and digital communication. In TMP2 we expand on this vision by considering the impact of nanotechnology, artificial general intelligence, and transhumanism in the creation of a much more diverse fabric for future civilization offering a great variety of possible lifestyles and a great diversification of culture and the human species itself. At the time the original TMP was written, the notion of a possible technological Singularity hinged on what was then considered the ultimate technology of the near-future; biotechnology. Research in artificial intelligence was waning as earlier strategies seemed to run into dead-ends and many computer scientists began expressing doubt in the possibilities of realizing it at all. But even as TMP was hitting the shelves of bookstores for the first time, speculation on the possibilities of nanotechnology were beginning to emerge in force among the science, engineering, and futurist communities and this opened a whole new set of -sometimes quite strange- doors into future possibilities. Books by Eric Drexler and others at the Foresight Nanotech Institute offered a vision of an imminent new industrial revolution deriving from emerging nanotechnology with the capability to produce machines of a sophistication far beyond the most advanced devices -microprocessors and computers- of the present and easily as sophisticated as the human brain itself. Nanotechnology offered new materials of miraculous performance, radical new medical techniques, and a potential miniaturization of the scale of industrial production systems such that people could fabricate most of what they might need day-to-day right in their own homes. Though the technology has a very long way to go, we are already seeing some dramatic impacts today. We are now compelled to reconsider the Solarian future in the context of this emergent technology and to explore its potential impacts on that vision of a Solar Civilization. There are several key things relating to/deriving from nanotechnology that we anticipate will strongly influence the nature of Solarian civilization; diamondoid materials, NanoFoam or other nanotechnology-based self-fabrication, the realization of artificial general intelligence, nanomedicine, and the convergence of AGI, biotechnology, nanocybernetics, and human biology (ie. Transhumanism). We will be discussing the evolution of nanotechnology and AI in detail in a later section. For now, let’s briefly look at how these will relate to the way Solarian civilization develops. Diamondoids One of the key materials products of the nanotech revolution, diamondoids are a vast assortment of carbon-based materials which rely on bulk fabrication at a molecular level of precision to realize diamond-like structures with the associated great strength of diamond. Because a very great diversity of physical structures at the molecular scale are possible with carbon, these materials may be engineered to incorporate a great diversity in physical properties. Of particular potential are the metamaterials, where the molecular structure of the materials allows them to incorporate chemical and physical characteristics of other materials based on more exotic or rare elements. But the most important characteristics of diamondoids will simply be their extremely great strength-to-mass characteristics and their great economy because of the abundance of carbon -to the point where it is now a critical life-threatening pollutant- on Earth. Once we have mastered the basics of production for these materials in some variety of forms, they may very quickly become the dominant material of our civilization -replacing steel, concrete, glass, and plastic- and may be key to the realization of a post-scarcity culture -a culture where the goods and materials needed to support a high standard of living become so economical they simply become free. This is a realistic possibility given a material so abundant and potentially extracted right from organic waste or out of the air itself given the possibilities of mechanosynthesis. The high strength of diamondoid materials will allow for the creation of spacecraft with extreme strength-to-weight characteristics, allowing for easy realization of single-stage-to-orbit terrestrial vehicles. Rigid hull dirigibles will replace lift gases with a vacuum, a technology that may even produce flying buildings stationed permanently in the air. Structures in space could easily become far larger and more delicate-looking while being far more resilient than anything we make today of steel, aluminum, and titanium. One of the most dramatic early examples of its potential in space may be the realization of the Bifrost Space Elevator -only possible with the incredible strength-to-mass characteristics of carbon nanofiber ribbons. With diamondoids space habitats of incredible scale -far larger than anything imagined by the likes of Gerard O’Neill and the other space colony proponents of the 1970s- become possible. One NASA study on the potential of nanotechnology envisioned rotating diamondoid habitats large enough to support the populations of many Earths combined! NanoFoam This future intelligent diamondoid material has been mentioned a number of times in other articles in TMP2 and, should anything remotely like it emerge by the time of the Solarian Age, it will very likely become the dominant physical medium of the entire civilization. NanoFoam is the anticipated predominate form for nanotechnology beyond the phase of the free-roaming assembler but preceding the phase of ambient environment assemblers and the ultimate evolution of the portable NanoFoundry fabrication system. Put simply, NanoFoam is a diamondoid material that hosts its own internal colonies of nanoassemblers, along with nanoassembler replication factories and multiply-redundant data processing and communications systems within a fluid-filled structure of microscopic vessels and channels akin to those of animal tissue, but made of much more resilient materials. Instead of making things, NanoFoam becomes things, plugging into some source of raw materials and its internal assemblers altering its physical structure and properties and internally creating the necessary mechanisms for whatever functions it needs to assume. One can imagine it as rather like a mass of stem-cells ready to grow into any kind of tissue or organ -except that this is made out of very strong diamondoids and has internal computing systems of potentially great processing power allowing it to actively manage its growth to produce complex structures and machines. Its self-transforming abilities would not be extremely fast but would be exponential in rate with volume and, of course, require no human intervention beyond dictating design. It would not be suited to commodities or food but could be useable for every kind of structure, vehicle, machine, and durable artifact we use. And, because of its integral data and communications systems, it could all be networked and all ‘aware’ to varying degrees. In TMP Marshal Savage suggested that the Solarian civilization might achieve a kind of integral collective consciousness among its innumerable habitats and across its vast digital networks. NanoFoam may prove to be the basis of that, with most artifacts in the human habitat containing its own networked digital intelligence -every thing a networked computer with a knowledge of its composition, a memory of its performance, the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of the civilization, and thus an ability to learn through its use and improve itself in active evolution. Everything in our habitat might become subtly self-optimizing, upgrading itself as the whole civilization learns by experience and through interaction with us. On Earth, the infrastructure of civilization would become a symbiotic organism in constant communication with the natural biosphere in order to coexist sustainably with it. Gaia would become self-aware for the first time. With such powerful technology for the self-creation of everything from cell phones (if they’re still called that) to structures of any scale the habitation of space would become incredibly easy. Lunar and planetary settlements could be founded by dropping a payload the size of a soccer ball wherever one wanted to settle and letting it grow into the strata like a plant, with little human intervention, then into a self-maintaining habitat ready to move into. Similarly, one could create an orbital colony by sending a similar package to an asteroid, letting it subsume it whole into NanoFoam, transport itself as a massive spacecraft to the desired location, and then transform into the desired habitat structure. We could pre-settle the galaxy by remote. With an ability to mimic virtually every kind of material from rock to living flesh, NanoFoam may even become the basis of human prosthetic implants or synthetic bodies for future artilects, every one of them carrying in themselves the full technological potential of the civilization wherever they go. NanoFoam is likely to have significant impact on the aesthetics of future architecture and artifacts owing to its extensive use of biomimicry to facilitate its self-fabrication processes. It will be capable of mimicking virtually any known material and assuming any texture and form we might imagine. But for speed and efficiency of its self-fabrication processes it will favor organic forms for the same reasons nature herself does. It would not be technically difficult for it to produce, let’s say, a house in the classic Palladian style with human direction for every aspect of its design, yet this would incur a potentially significant trade-off in construction speed and materials efficiency. More often -given a culture grown used to the idea of things made and recycled on-demand and therefore more concerned with the speed of their fabrication- the organic forms NanoFoam has learned through experience to create most efficiently will suffice, of not become aesthetically preferred. Thus we may find a culture that, visually, has much in common with that suggested by contemporary artists and designers like Roger and Martyn Dean, Peter Vetsch, and Luigi Colani. This would be a radical shift from the modular aesthetics common to the Asgard era and the early Post-Industrial culture. Artificial General Intelligence Focus of much of our hopes and fears in the modern era and lynchpin of many a vision of the future, Artificial Intelligence has long proven to be more elusive than first imagined -to the point where not a few scientists and intellectuals have given up hope for its realization altogether. And yet, today, we may at last be quite close to it -one to a few decades away if research projects in the wholesale reverse-engineering of the brain like Switzerland’s Bluebrain project can stay on track. Already very simple forms of what we now commonly refer to as ‘narrow’ AI are beginning to find their way into software and robotics. Exactly when we will realize Artificial General Intelligence -AI equivalent to human intelligence and capable of true sentience- remains a toss-up but it’s a fair bet that if it is possible at all, it will exist and be quite technologically robust by the time of Solaria. (and possibly emergent during the Asgard phase) The implications of AI are great; radical amplification of the potential of industrial automation, a human habitat increasingly aware and intelligent, a radical new understanding of the brain and human consciousness, a new coexistence with a new branch of the human race, and a possible transition for many organic human beings to that new branch as a lifestyle choice. In science fiction and other media we still make the mistake of depicting ‘artilects’ (artificially intelligent beings) as broken humans or enigmatic aliens. But these will be beings created through the reverse-engineering of our own minds and brains, with the disease and defects removed. They will, in terms of the things by which we define ‘humanity’, be largely indistinguishable from us save for the nature of their lifestyles as defined/determined by the nature of the inorganic technology which hosts their life. Initially, they may be limited to virtual environments able to offer them, in simulation, at least as great a sensory experience and freedom of self-expression as we in our physical material environment have -this because of limitations in the potential of robotics as an interface to the material world. The robotics potential of NanoFoam may eventually eliminate those limitations, affording the artilect the option of ‘material avatars’ largely indistinguishable from organic life forms and nearly as fully capable of dexterity, subtlety, sensory comprehensiveness, and potential for self-expression in the material environment as their VR avatars in the virtual environment. Given the nature of future humanity when such technologies come to full fruition, we may ultimate come to see little difference between those people born of software and those born from biology. AGI will also have tremendous impact on the process and ultimate result of space colonization. In its emergence through narrow -yet progressively less so- AI, it will increasingly automate the processes of establishing infrastructures for settlement and resource exploitation, reducing exponentially the risks, hazards, and costs of space development and accelerating the pace of human colonization of the solar system. But at the same time, the emerging community of artilects will find great advantages over their organic human counterparts in the habitation of the space environment by virtue of their immunity to many of the basic hazards of that environment, their much simplified life support needs, and their ability to travel across space at the speed of light via digital telecommunications. Early in the history of artilect culture there will remain much dependence on the organic human society for the creation and maintenance of the material systems upon which their lives are based. This is because electronics and robotics, based for some time largely on pre-nanotech methods of fabrication, will remain generally inferior functionally to organic physiology. The early artilects will also be few in number, dependent upon relatively large and expensive computer systems that are geographically isolated. Engineered to be social and gregarious from the start (as they may even originate in entertainment software intended to be engaging and appealing to people as companions and entertainers) artilects will likely not just accept but actively embrace, encourage, and cultivate a symbiotic relationship with their organic counterparts. After all, initially their very existence may well depend on how culturally significant they become to the larger organic human society maintaining their hardware. But as robotics technology advances -with the participation of the artilects themselves- an eventual parity of functionality will quickly be achieved affording this new society an easily exercised option for complete independence and the freedom to settle the solar system at a potentially much faster pace without organic humans. This point will most certainly be reached by the time of Solaria. Will organic humanity be left behind by their electric progeny in the quest to colonize space? The answer will probably depend on the potential cultural divergence between the two because, in strict terms of efficiency in the process of colonization, organic humans are at a great disadvantage due to the comparatively high overhead of their life support and the complications of this for their functional activity in the space environment. So -in something of a role-reversal- their importance to the future space-faring society will depend largely on their social, cultural, perhaps even emotional importance to the artilect community. It’s not a question of if they will be needed but rather if they will be wanted. This may be a near thing. Given the state of the western culture at present, with its propensity for compulsive science-fearing religiously motivated conservatism, and the prospect of the emergence of AGI within some decades, the early history of artilect culture is quite likely to bear the marks of organic human bigotry, suppression, and possibly random and institutional violence due to compulsive economic and religiously motivated fear or political exploitation. Early artilects are likely to become unwilling world celebrities and we can readily anticipate a century of debate and controversy -well exploited by the media- over the question of the humanity of artilects and their rights within the human society -which, if sufficiently suppressed will compel these beings to seek their own ways to realize and secure those rights in spite of organic humanity. Should a society of artilects find themselves radically culturally at odds with the majority of organic human society -which is most likely should the contemporary trend toward cultural irrationality not soon be reversed-, they would be less inclined toward partnering with them and more inclined to seek isolated autonomy and an independent pursuit of development in places humans cannot easily reach -which includes space. Once artilects are in space, cultural divergence is likely to be exacerbated by simple telecommunications latency. On Earth an artilect community could be physically well secured for sake of safety from a radical social element -let’s say secluded in underground or underwater facilities, on marine colonies, or just very subtly and redundantly distributed among and immersed within the terrestrial digital infrastructure- but still remain very well connected by telecommunications to the society and culture at large. Virtual environments -likely to become a common basis of mass entertainment in the near future as we will discuss in another article- as well as all other forms of public media and communications would be equally accessible to artilects and organic humans everywhere and offer robust cultural and social interaction between them. But once this community of artilects settles in space, communications latency will preclude access to the public virtual environments of Earth and, likewise, preclude human access to those setup in space. Much like any manned settlements in space isolated by distance and asynchronous communication, a village-like subculture may emerge among communities of artilects ‘manning’ automated facilities in relative isolation. They are far less likely to visualize futures where the participation of organic humans is relevant because they simply have so little contact with them, could potentially operate so freely on their own, and their potential expansion into space without human participation would be much faster. The only counter to this eventuality would be a clear partnership in space development with the organic human society and/or the invention of a superluminal means of telecommunication that can keep all the virtual environments and digital infrastructure in space fully connected to Earth without latency. The TMP2 vision anticipates that the communities created by TMP development, with their deliberate cultivation of more scientifically rational and philosophically progressive cultures, will be an attraction to early artilects as much as any rational people in the world. And, with any luck, these communities -as part of the rest of TMP work- may be participating directly in the AI R&D that ultimately produces these new beings. By providing possible havens on Earth for this emerging new branch of society and embracing a partnership with them in the development of space, TMP’s communities may be key to cementing the relationship between these otherwise potential divergent branches of humanity. The potential willingness of the more culturally rational societies of TMP to embrace this new branch of the human race may be key to insuring both a long-term future for organic society in space and an option for some portion of it for a transition or merging with this new branch society as, together, they reach to the stars. Nanomedicine Nanomedicine is a broad area of future technology that involves the application of nanotechnology to health in the form of new ways to develop and produce drugs and prosthetics, as the integral basis of new kinds of prosthetic devices, as the basis of new therapies, or as the basis of new forms of surgical intervention. Again, we will leave a more detailed discussion of these possibilities to a later, more dedicated, article on the subject. For the moment the important points are how this technology will impact life in space and the key anticipated impacts of this by the time of the Solarian age will be the clinical solution to ‘space wasting’ and other health impacts associated with living in space and the very distinct possibility of virtual immortality for humanity. The problem of physical deterioration in a microgravity or reduced gravity environment is one of the most critical challenges for the future of space settlement and, so far, it’s proving to be a much more difficult challenge than anticipated during the First Space Age. Despite a decade of man-in-space activity, no definitive solution is in sight. Contemporary space advocates are loath to discuss it because it is, quite simply, a potential deal-breaker for our prospects of a spacefaring future and will be much more important in dictating the pace of space development than any spacecraft technology. Marshal Savage anticipated an imminent and relatively easy clinical solution to this deriving from developments in biotechnology. The vision of TMP is largely dependent upon this because it assumes a leveraging of the essential economy of the microgravity habitat as an accelerator of manned space development. If we are compelled, as was envisioned by the 1970s/80s proponents of giant orbital colonies, to rely exclusively on large costly rotating habitats as the predominate form of habitat in space, the pace of space development will be greatly stunted, Mars and the Moon may prove incapable of sustained settlement in the near-term, and organic humanity may be compelled long-term to abandon space development largely to its AI progeny. Thankfully, it is likely that, should no simpler clinical solutions emerge sooner, nanotechnology will, by the time of Solaria, offer the ultimate solution to this problem through the strategy of biophysical augmentation; the use of nanomechanisms hosted by the human body to actively counter the impact of space wasting through biochemical mechanosynthesis by symbiotic nanomechanisms and automated microsurgical repair by medical nanoassemblers all perpetually hosted within the human body. Space dwellers using this technology would be a subtle sort of cyborg where hardware isn’t fused to the organic body but rather takes the form of colonies of nanomachines that co-exist among the motile elements of our physiology much as bacteria often do. Such technology would also be key to countering the effects of cumulative radiation exposure and may accelerate development and adoption of the use of a variety of other forms of biochemical and biophysical augmentation such as pulmonary enhancement to increase oxygen use efficiency, active compensation of sedentary effects for travelers kept in induced comas for long duration missions, and the in-situ fabrication of prosthetics such as wireless digital interfaces to our natural senses for communication and personal computing augmentation. But if we are compelled to wait until such advanced technology emerges to make human habitation in space practical, earlier space development may not be nearly as comprehensive or more limited to robotics. Solaria could, in that case, be an age of ‘catching up’ for humanity in spreading into a solar system largely the province of machines. Such means of biophysical augmentation also presents the prospect of a means to virtual immortality by virtue of a symbiotic colony of nanomachines able to actively counter the effects of aging. The elimination of space wasting may thus prove simultaneously to be the ‘cure for death’ many have also hoped to see nanotechnology realize, making the inhabitants of space also the first generation of virtually immortal human beings. Though this is certainly a most speculative idea, this prospect has long been anticipated by proponents of nanotechnology and features in many a vision of impending technology Singularity. The sociological and cultural implications of this are so great that they go far beyond the scope of even a grand vision like TMP. But with such a capability, the potential for galactic dispersion of our civilization is much increased as it becomes easier for humanity to potentially cope with the protracted periods of time required to travel among the stars. Cybernetic Convergence and Transhumanist Divergence The combination of the technologies described above will greatly impact our culture and increasingly alter the nature of humanity itself. As nanotechnology achieves parity of sophistication with the machinery of natural biology and begins to merge with it as we seek to use it in the application of medicine and functional human augmentation it will increasingly blur the line between organic human culture and the culture of artilects also emergent from the application of nanotechnology. What it means to be human will be defined decreasingly by biology and increasingly by the architecture of human consciousness shared across a spectrum of life between the purely organic human being and the entirely software-based artilect. And so we will see, simultaneously, a ‘cybernetic convergence’ of biology and technology focused on the realization of consciousness as a definition of human life independent of either and a ‘transhumanist divergence’ as technology enables us to explore all the possible variations of existence, experience, and lifestyle along that transhumanist spectrum between the organic and the inorganic embodiment of consciousness. What this all means in a more practical sense is a physical and cultural diversification of future society where the natural (if it can still be called that even today) human body is no longer the basis of defining a human being and is no longer a de-facto physical restriction on human potential. Marshal Savage envisioned the human species in the Galactia phase of civilization as slowly diverging, aided by the application of biotechnology toward physical adaptation to the variations in environments of other planets. But evolution is not driven solely by natural environmental concerns. Aesthetics and culture also get into the act. Since the invention of language, we have moved toward a progressively less-than-natural selection process. Human reproduction is no longer driven purely by forces of instinct and mediated by the processes of natural biology and sexual opportunity is now largely a matter mediated by culture rather than based on ‘fitness’ within a particular natural habitat. We aren’t part of the planetary evolution game anymore, except as a force of potential environmental impact. We, as a species (perhaps as a consequence of our self-awareness), have always been uncomfortable in our own bodies and we have been using any technology available to tinker with them for the sake of self-expression, aesthetic ideals largely independent of biology, cultural and social identity, and functional epigenetic adaptation. Not anticipating the impact of nanotechnology, Savage assumed the physical divergence of humanity to be a distant, slow, incremental prospect. But with such technology and a convergence of life across the boundaries between biology and technology our ability to casually re-engineer ourselves to suit our needs and desires will explode to an unprecedented degree, and possibly well before we begin that interstellar diaspora. The people of the Solarian age will have options in terms of lifestyle and body architecture that are hard to even imagine at present. Artilects, native to the virtual habitat and relying on bodies in the form of digitally synthesized avatars and manufactured-on-demand robotics of increasing subtlety, will be used to a lifestyle where their whole physical forms will be as freely changeable as clothing -and they will use that freely as a means of self expression, so much so that their application of robotics may actually be hampered by its lack of spontaneous changeability. With the cybernetic convergence and the merging of biology and technology, this cultural notion of the body as customizable/replaceable avatar may spread through society at large and we will see people customizing and modifying their own bodies with increasing freedom and casualness as the technology affords it. Genetics and biology will decreasingly matter in determining how we look and what we can do. The likely end result is a wildly physically and culturally divergent society. A world populated by ‘people’ in a myriad of forms -some perhaps wildly divergent from the natural human architecture- relating to their aesthetic tastes, fashion, personal interests and fantasies, cultural and social affinities and incorporating a variety of practical augmentation technology to suit their needs -particular in terms of personal communication with the digital infrastructure around them. Burdened as we are today by racial, ethnic, and class biases and primitive moral taboos rooted in religious superstition, we can scarcely imagine the wild society that is likely to evolve by the Solarian age. There is little to compare it to. Contemporary prosthetics technology remains quite primitive -and unnecessarily so in part because of our cultural biases toward the disabled. Cosmetic surgery is equally primitive -and frankly the aesthetic models the profession proscribes to seem rather bizarre when this is used to an extreme. But the seeds of this future already exist in our historic propensity for using any technology at hand for the customization of our bodies and for spontaneously creating subcultures in steadily increasing profusion. These compulsions to customize ourselves have only been held back by the inconveniences of the available techniques. Those have slowly gone away with time and will be largely eliminated with the advent of nanotechnology. What this will mean for the nature of space development in the future is a bit difficult to predict. But what is likely is a diversification in the design of habitats in parallel to the diversification of the communities that inhabit them. Across the phases of Asgard and Avalon the design of our habitats in space will tend toward the functionalist, dictated largely by the nature of the space environment and the most efficient strategies for supporting life in this environment. But with the advent of NanoFoam, a great ease of accommodating the conditions of the space environment will be realized, affording habitats a freedom and diversity of design previously impractical. By the time of Solaria, it not be any more difficult to create rotating artificial gravity habitats than microgravity ones. The choice will be an aesthetic one; to live immersed in the environment of space or to live sheltered from it in a re-creation of Earth. This physical and culturally divergent future society will thus explore a parallel diversity of habitat designs to accommodate their chosen lifestyles and aesthetic tastes. Later on, we will discuss some of the variations in design likely. Ironically, as we reach out to the stars, we may become the oft-imagined wild diversity of life we used to anticipate finding there. When we at last do encounter those alien societies we’ve fantasized about, we may find them little stranger than ourselves. A Golden Halo Around The Sun Throughout the earlier articles of TMP2 we have cautioned against the cultivation of, to paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson, Greek temple on a golf course visions of the future -difficult as that may be when discussing such a concept as the colonization of space. But Solaria is well out on the edge of what we can plausibly project from contemporary and anticipated technology and cultural trends and a truly accurate model for this phase is unlikely. We have little hope of getting all the notes right. We can only hope that we approximate the right tune. Still, it’s important as a motivator for the pursuit of TMP to present a vision for this culmination of civilization that offers us something to aspire towards. It’s OK that our deductive reasoning may prove to be a bit fuzzy because we are crafting a vision of the future both plausible in what it could be and desirable as what we want it to be. This is not the future fated to us but a future as we may have the option to make it. We are, in our visualization of this phase, deliberately seeking the Greek temple on the golf course as a thing to aspire toward, knowing full well that, in the end, things will very likely turn out different to some degree. But without some notion of where we want to go, would we ever begin the journey? Much of this vision may seem fantastic -perhaps a little frightening. This is a future not for people as we but for people as we -or our children- may become. It may be folly to even speculate on a future so distant. But it’s even greater folly to walk backwards into it. We did not walk backwards out of Olduvai Gorge. In the following articles in this section we will present this vision of the solar civilization in more itemized detail. We will examine some possible forms of human habitation deriving from the potential of NanoFoam or technologies akin to it. And we will discuss some of the possible fantastic lifestyles that transhumanist crazyquilt born of tomorrow’s technology may offer. Sub-Topics *Life In Solaria *EcoSphere *RhiZome *BioZome *Solar Snowflake - Sunflower - Sundisc - Solar Ribbon *Geopolis *Dyson Sphere *Solarian Spacecraft *Solaria Supporting Technologies Phases Category:Solaria Category:Phases